International Trader - Asia

Commodity Pain Relievers

Asian supply-chain managers can offer a respite to investors looking to get a little buffer from commodity producers. The stocks are dirt cheap.

Feeding on the boom in China, India, Indonesia, and other emerging markets over the past decade, Asian commodity supply-chain companies carved out a profitable niche. They will pick up, say, raw sugar from a plantation and get it to a supermarket shelf as cubed sugar, or bring coal from a mine to a steel plant. They can handle trading, logistics, shipping, storage, processing, and grading of commodities. But as commodity prices have plunged on decreased demand, the supply-chain managers' stocks are down 40% to 50%. Although commodity prices might not recover for a year or two, these shares are now so cheap that they...